Cebu still has the most voters

CEBU, Philippines - Cebu, including all its cities, continues to be the “number one province” in terms of voting population with more than 2.1 million registered voters, said a Commission on Elections-7 official.

Comelec-7 regional attorney and provincial election supervisor Lionel Marco Castillano, said in an interview that they are expecting at least a 10-percent increase in the 2.1 million votes, as per their July records.

 It was Cebu that won President Gloria Arroyo the presidency when it delivered a solid 1.1 million votes to her during the 2004 presidential elections, defeating the late actor Fernando Poe Jr.

 Meanwhile, Castillano said that preparations at the Comelec for the next year’s elections are already underway.

 The registration for the new voters has already stopped and the Elections Registration Board is scheduled to convene to evaluate the applications for registration from November 16 to 20, said Cebu’s election supervisor.

 Castillano said that by next month, they expect to have one polling machine delivered to their office for them to start demonstrating to the public how this will be used for the May 2010 elections.

 Smartmatic, the contractor of next year’s automated elections, has also started its survey in some towns at the southern part of the province to see if there are telephone signals there for the transmission of election results.

 Castillano said that 3,200 polling machines will be scattered all over the region.

 Each machine will be shared by five polling precincts, which will be merged into one, said Castillano.

Meanwhile, to allay fears of failure of elections, Castillano assured the public that there will be a mock election using the new technology to see if it will work or not. And in case it won’t, Castillano said since the official ballots will still be used, they could always switch to the manual tallying of votes. — Liv G. Campo/BRP (THE FREEMAN)